It is common practice to enhance or vary the flavor of nuts by coating the nuts with a confection. Illustrative of the prior art coatings are honey, hexitols and other confections, incorporating into the coating, rice or wheat flour.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,671,266 discloses a process for coating nuts which comprises wetting the nuts with water or a sorbitol solution, dusting the wet nuts with comminuted mannitol and roasting the treated nuts.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,053,650 discloses a method for preparing a baked confection which comprises alternately coating a nut with an aqueous viscous solution, a leavening agent and an edible flour, e.g., rice or wheat flour. The aqueous viscous solution may be corn syrup, a sugar solution, a gum solution or a dextrin solution.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,740,236 discloses a method for reconstituting partially defatted nuts and coating the reconstituted product with a dry powdered coating of salt, monosodium glutamate, yeast extract, starch, dextrin, herbs and spices.
More recently a method has been disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,165,545 for the coating of nuts with a honey based material. FIG. I is an illustrative flow diagram of that coating method. Raw nuts are first coated with a mixture of honey and water. The honey coated nuts are then enrobed with a dry mixture of sugar and starch, and roasted. After the nuts are cooled an additional sugar coating is applied before packaging.
These prior art methods fail to produce an ideal product for various reasons. Where the coating is put on the nut prior to roasting the coating is degraded by the roasting process and the degraded coating is "flaked off" by the pressure of volatiles released from nuts during roasting.
As a result a significant portion of the coating is lost in handling and packaging of the nuts. Additionally, flavoring materials applied with the coating are lost during the roasting process or physically removed with the flaked off coating.
In the case of the honey coated nuts of the prior art, the nuts develop a burnt flavor, as a result of caramelization of sugars during roasting, and part of the honey flavor is lost. Since, as a result, the nuts develop a dark color, it is necessary to cover up this objectional color by applying ground blanched peanuts or other materials as an after-coating. During the roasting process much of the wet coating sticks to process equipment. This creates an undesired loss and creates product of inferior quality. Furthermore, excessive process time is expended in equipment clean up.
What is required is an effective and efficient method of honey coating nuts which avoids the problems of the prior art and results in a nut product with a fresh, distinctive honey flavor.